In a twist worthy of Pravda, the Fullerton Observer has gone all-in with being an arm of the state. Sharon Kennedy retained a computer expert to help the city in their lawsuit against us, a rival news organization here in the City of Fullerton. That “expert” has now written a declaration for the city in their lawsuit against us evil “hackers”.
Sharon Kennedy’s own contracted “expert” is now working in cahoots with the city. In a terrible look for local journalism Kennedy has literally retained somebody to help the government attack the First Amendment. From his declaration (emphasis added):
“I was retained by the newspaper, Fullerton Observer, to analyze the expert declaration of Matthew Strebe submitted by the City of Fullerton and provide an independent opinion on whether a connection could be made between the City of Fullerton’s Dropbox account and the Defendants associated with Friends for Fullerton’s Future Blog, including named defendants Joshua Ferguson and David Curlee. I reviewed the Declaration of Matthew Strebe, summarizing his forensic analysis of the incident involving the City of Fullerton’s private records.”
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press came to our aid, as have multiple other outlets. Meanwhile the Observer is the only, I repeat THE ONLY, media outlet to openly support the City in attempting to limit the first amendment to whatever the government wants it to say.
It’s not often you get to see a journalistic outlet try and tank a rival at the behest of government – well, not often outside of Mother #Russia anyways. Yet, here we have the Fullerton Observer helping attack us with “expert” testimony while simultaneously claiming on every article their desire to “Protect local journalism”.
Thankfully while Fullerton Pravda…. I mean the Observer was carrying City Hall’s water we went ahead and found our own expert who concluded the following [Linked HERE]:
“The evidence presented by the City in no way supports any allegation of “unauthorized access” or “exceeding access” of any computer system. The evidence shows that the City itself placed this information on the internet without access control allowing anyone full permission to download the content. The access logs, even if authenticated, do not substantiate, in the absence of other corroborating evidence, that all Tor, VPN, and foreign traffic belongs to the Defendants. Nor is Mr. Ferguson’s use of PureVPN a sufficient or even suggestive data point to implicate guilt.”
This case just keeps getting crazier by the day. I knew Sharon Kennedy and her Observer had issues with this blog but I never expected her to literally contract somebody who then attacks us in court at behest of the city’s ludicrous and defamatory allegations.
For some lawyers, every problem is a nail. Don’t like what you see? Take it personally and swing a hammer as hard as you possibly can. Damn the consequences and damn the people involved, what matters is your pride and smiting that heretical nail.
Unfortunately for Fullerton taxpayers, that’s exactly the mentality of the legal wunderkind at Jones and Mayer. Annoy the city and get the legal equivalent of “See these fists? They’re getting ready to fuck you up.” We all know how well that strategy of bullying and brunt stupidity worked out for all of us the last time around. Yet here we are, repeating history, and somehow expecting a different result.
Many of you wonder why the many writers associated with this humble blog post under fake names. Some of us own property, some of us have kids, some of us have parents in Fullerton, and some of us own businesses in town. All of us have been threatened by city employees as a result of our participation in local politics. Most of us don’t want to have our lives turned upside down because we want the city to fix potholes instead of covering for employees who lie, cheat, steal, and occasionally beat members of the public. A few of us are made of tougher stuff and attach the real and personal consequences of speaking up for the public to their livelihood. Sometimes it’s a black sedan parked across the street from your house, sometimes it’s a little something special left in your trash can, others it’s anonymous letters sent to clients and employers, and for some (now former) contributors to this blog it’s literally two men dressed in black wearing a silver badge showing up on your doorstep at 11pm telling you and your wife it’s time to leave town. Most of you won’t believe any of that, but to one degree or another, every single one of us had something occur within six months of criticising a member of city council or a senior employee at the city or union. Fullerton plays for keeps, so keep your mouth shut or bad things will happen.
Why? Because if voters really understood that brass at FPD really do intimidate submitters of official complaints from women sexually assaulted by officers, really do lie under oath to protect those on their side of the thin blue line, and really do withhold backup from officers who report evil cops to internal affairs, they’d revolt and throw enablers like Jennifer Fitzgerald, Jan Flory, Doug Chaffee, and the recalled bald tires out of town on a rail. While the abuse at the fire department and non-public safety positions is comparatively much less severe, we still have evidence of employees drinking on the job, destroying city assets, stealing property, and using their official capacity to profit both on and off the taxpayer clock. This stuff literally happens every single month and FFFF is the only local information provider willing to publish accounts exposing just how bad things are.
Want to know why our roads look like shit? Well, read the archive. You’re not dealing with decision makers who are pure as the driven snow. They have a vested personal monetary and political interest to keep the public in the dark.
So, I put it to you reader. If you were a city official wanting to keep the voters in the dark, what’s the best way to make sure facts, accounts, or even just rumors make their way out into the public for consumption?
Clean up the city? Stop the lying, cheating, stealing, pussy grabbing, and beating of people?
Come clean and ask for forgiveness? Simply tell the truth about lying, cheating, stealing, pussy grabbing, and beating of people?
What about just locking it down and staying quiet. Just don’t acknowledge the lying, cheating, stealing, pussy grabbing, or beating of people?
Nope.
Fullerton goes with it’s version “WE ARE SPARTA!” method of attacking the messenger. Don’t like that your lying, cheating, stealing, pussy grabbing and beating of people is getting out in public? Break the knees of anyone telling that story and your problem gets solved real quick. After all, if it fails, it’s not like you’re going to jail for wrecking someone’s life.
Last week, one of our writers Joshua Ferguson, announced he had filed suit to get access to documents Fullerton is legally required to produce concerning city employees lying, cheating, stealing, pussy grabbing, and beating of people. Guess what FFFF received a week later as a direct consequence of standing up to the entrenched and belligerent interests at city hall?
That’s right, two of our named authors are being sued. Along with an employer.
Why? Because the city knows exactly what will happen. Screw mortgage payments, screw tuition bills, and screw putting food on the table: You didn’t shut up when we told you to, so now we’re doing to take your whole fucking life away because we can. Enjoy these fists fucking you up. Good-bye paycheck and hello desperation.
In the end, perhaps the court will see this isn’t even a thinly veiled attempt to attack the public’s right to know, free speech, and the fundamental precept that the government shouldn’t use its resources to go about wrecking lives. If that happens, it will be years or months from now, you will pay the bill, and the damage caused by Jones and Mayer swinging their hammer will be done. This blog has 3236 articles and counting. Hundreds of news stories emanating from bad things at city hall were broken here. All of that threatens to come to an end because our writers won’t risk being attacked by the local powers at be for telling the truth.
Be that as it may reader, remember this: Your roads look like shit because people like Jennifer Fitzgerald and those who support her would rather spend her time attacking messengers and threatening families than make hard choices about how big the raises should be for those who endorse her campaigns for office.
This is your Fullerton. If the endless supply of stories concerning lying, cheating, stealing, pussy grabbing, and beating of people hasn’t gotten your attention yet, maybe this latest round of intimidation will. In the meantime, your roads are as shitty today as they were yesterday, and they’ll still be shitty tomorrow when this lawsuit moves forward.
As many Friends now know, the City of Fullerton has decided to move on from bullying language to actually sue FFFF. Here’s a summation from The Voice of OC.
Domer. So much less there than meets the eye.
The City has also posted a ponderous press release on its website, written in the high dudgeon of a bureaucrat whom you suspect already realizes that diverting attention from his own bungling by blaming somebody else, may be harder to pull off than he had hoped. Here’s our $230,000 per year City Manager Ken Domer trying desperately to seize some sort of high moral ground:
“The City was forced into taking legal action to protect the privacy of current and former employees and the public, and to ensure compliance with applicable law to include the California Public Records Act,” stated Fullerton City Manager, Ken Domer. “We are working aggressively on behalf of those affected and took immediate actions to put in place a more secure information technology environment. These actions support our philosophy of transparent access to information while protecting confidential information from the unethical and illegal actions of a few.”
Now I don’t know about you, Friends, but I find the words “unethical” and “illegal” to be pretty funny tumbling out of the mouth of Domer, whose only aim in his short tenure in Fullerton seems to have been to fight a rear-guard action against transparency. Domer’s self-righteous indignation is comical coming from the lackey of serial liars on the City Council – people like Jan Flory who is, and always has been, dangerously allergic to the truth; like Jennifer Fitzgerald who has not yet seen an ethical barrier she couldn’t sidestep; and like Doug “Bud” Chaffee who was complicit in his wife’s phony carpetbagging address and stealing campaign signs she didn’t like.
The budget is balanced and the cops are tip-top. Or else.
We need only reflect on the way the City has bent over backwards to cover-up the scandal of Wild Ride Joe Felz to know that what Domer is peddling about is utter bullshit.
And as further proof (if we needed any), let us pause for a moment to consider the following snippet from Domer’s press release:
Based on evidence uncovered in our internal investigation and direction from the City Council, the City Attorney’s Office has now filed a complaint in Superior Court seeking a temporary restraining order against the involved Blog and its contributors.
Say what? Direction from the City Council? When O’ when did that ever occur? The issue of whether or not to take FFFF to court has never been publicly agendized and never voted on by the City Council. The subject has never been discussed by our marble-mouthed City Attorney, Dick Jones reporting out of Closed Session.
Domer says he has a “philosophy” of transparent access to information. His actions give us a crystal-clear view of what that philosophy really is: stall, hide, deceive, misrepresent, and ass-cover.
It may have been expensive, but it sure was unnecessary…
I watched this little gem of a clip from Bill Maher’s cable show last night. Bill rails against the added cost laden on to stuff simply because people can get away with it it.
In particular Maher notes the exorbitant cost of government projects, namely housing for the homeless and infrastructure where the “soft costs” including the inevitable army of “consultants” and lobbyists drives up the cost to absurdly comical levels. For the cost of building an “affordable” housing unit you could easily buy some homeless dude a condominium.
For those of us paying attention in Fullerton we have seen this in spades:
Five million bucks for a couple of traction elevators at the depot. Two million bucks for some crappy, rickety wood stairs at Hillcrest Park. The better part of a million bucks for a decorative bridge over the muddy ditch known as Brea Creek. Etc, etc., etc. The fact that these vanity efforts were totally unnecessary just adds insult to the injurious price tag.
The fact is that government building projects are grossly over-managed. There are architects and engineers galore; there are construction managers; there are general contractor’s project managers and superintendents coming out of the woodwork. And then there are the government’s “project managers” who manage virtually nothing but have blanketed themselves with warm layers of external “expertise” to insulate themselves against the inevitable sideways momentum of their next disaster.
Meanwhile the politicians who are elected to watch out for our interests are too lazy, ignorant, indifferent, or self-interested to give a damn.
The Voice of OC has a detailed story about how our city council approved giving half a million bucks to something called the Illumination Foundation to acquire and operate a homeless shelter somewhere in Fullerton.
Provide Your Own Caption
As usual Jennifer Fitzgerald and Jan Flory pretended to care about the fact that the public has not been informed of the location of this place even though they know very well where it is. In the end they went along with their brethren Jesus Silva and Ahmad Zahra and voted 4-0 to commit $500,000 to this philanthropic endeavor (their philanthropy, our money). Bruce Whitaker was missing in action.
I really care about you. No, wait. That’s wrong…
Of course Fitzgerald is running for re-election next year in District 1, so we can be certain the proposed property won’t be anywhere near her house, or that of Flory.
T-REX SO HAPPY. FOOLERTON APPROVE NEW EXPERIMENT FOR PERSONS EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS. YOU SLEEP IN CAR AND THE CITY GIVE YOU PRESENTS. T-REX LOVE GIVING PRESENTS TO PERSONS EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS.
T-REX HAVE IDEAS FOR WHERE TO PUT PARKING AND GIFT GIVING.
MAYBE RAYTHEON PARKING LOT. YUUUUUGE, NEXT TO JOBS AND TRAILS, NEXT TO NICE HOMES, GREAT PLACE TO PARK AND GIFT. BASTANCHURY PARK RIGHT NEXT DOOR, TOO.
RALPH B CLARK PARK HAVE YUUUUGE PARKING LOTS. LOTS OF DUCKS TO EAT. QUIET, PEACEFUL, BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO PARK AND GIFT.
MAYBE FOOLERTON USE CHURCHES ON EUUUUUUCLID. PERSONS EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS GET A LITTLE JESUS BEFORE HITTING THE FULLERTON LOOP.
MAYBE MUCKENTHALER. IS CUTE PARKING, GET SOME CULTURE WITH PARK AND GIFT, NEXT TO ROADS AND BUS LINES. PERFECT PLACE FOR PERSONS EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS.
T-REX THINK THAT WHERE EVER FOOLERTON PUT PEOPLE TO PARK AND SLEEP, THEY SHOULD BE CLOSE TO JENNIFER FITZGERALD. SHE SEEM SO EAGER TO AGREE TO IDEA, MAYBE THIS TIME SHE FINALLY PAY FOR ONE OF HER DECISIONS. T-REX THINK IT GREAT SHE VOLUNTEER HER NEIGHBORS FOR EXPERIMENT FOR PERSONS EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS.
T-REX SO HAPPY. SO MANY NEW FRIENDS. THANK YOU JENNIFER FITZGERALD. THANK YOU FOR YOUR EXPERIMENT WITH PERSONS EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS. WE HOPE YOUR NEIGHBORS HAPPY LIKE T-REX, TOO.
Missing person? Well, they better not show up. Or else…
The cops always ask us, when we dare to criticize their unlawful, corrupt,or incompetent behavior: who are you going to call when you need help?Sometimes the question evolves into a statement: I hope we’re gonna be there when you need us. Then it always comes across as a thinly veiled bit of extortion on the part of those sworn to uphold “public safety,” and are taking public money (lots of it) to do so. I’m reminded of the mob shakedown racketeer: jeez, it will be a real shame if something is happening to youse guy’s nice bisness.
But enough small talk. FFFF received correspondence today from a Fullerton resident who believes he recently made a big mistake calling the FPD instead of just relying on the kindness of strangers.
Here is the story in his very own words – as addressed to the Police Chief, the City Council and the District Attorney.
Date: Sunday, September 29, 2019
To: Fullerton Police Chief, City Council Members, Orange County District Attorneys Office
From: Toby R Oliver, Fullerton resident
A call by me to the Fullerton Police Department last night for help in finding a mother and two-year old son has exploded into at hellish nightmare after FPD Sergeants decided to arrest said mother for doing nothing more than getting lost.
My wife and mother of our three sons, Pranee Sribunruang, now sits in the Santa Ana Jail on $100,000 bail, charged with felony child endangerment because two Fullerton Police Sergeants decided it was their duty to put her there after she went for a walk, got lost and took several hours to make it back home.
FPD Sergeants Brandon Clyde and Emmanuel Pulido pitched a mission of help and concern when I met them out front of our home last night, pulling out all the stops to help find Pranee and our two-year-old son Leo. Then just as the Sheriff’s Department blood hound was about to be given her scent, Pranee stepped out of a vehicle that had pulled up, driven by a good semaritan who found her and Leo at a gas station and brought them home.
This is when it all changed.
Immediately, Pranee was someone who had done something wrong. Forcing her to sit on the curb, out came a thosand questions from the officers. Where did you go? What were you doing? Who were you with? “What do you mean you wanted to walk to Norwalk, you can’t walk to Norwalk,” Sergeant Pulido spewed. I tried to step in, and the officers pulled me away, saying this and that about needing to talk to her separately. One of the junior officers brought me aside and tried to calm me down, “We just want to help her, find out what’s going on,” he said. “Go inside and I’ll call you out in a minute.”
I waited a few minutes, went back outside and Pranee was gone. I asked where she was. “She is being arrested,” they said. “For what,” I replied, “which car is she in?” They wouldn’t tell me, and they wouldn’t tell me what she was being charged with. “You’ll find out Tuesday,” one of them said. Then I saw her head up against the back side window of one of the patrol cars. I went toward her, grabbed at the window and said “babe.” I didn’t know what to say. It had all gone horribly wrong, so quick. And I was responsible because I had called the FPD for their help.
Before I could do anything else, one of the officers jumped in the car and tore off down the street, leaving me there looking after her. I still didn’t really understand what was happening. This was supposed to be about finding Pranee and Leo. Now they were taking her away before I could even hug her.
Pranee is the kindest person I know. Her life is about showing kindess to others. Everyone she meets falls in love with her and her kind spirit. She had never been arrested before. She never even had a speeding ticket. No misdemeanors, no arguments with anyone (except me, her husband), and certainly never any child neglect or endangerment. The only way you knew she was mad at you was when she didn’t speak to you. Now she sits in the Santa Ana County Jail thanks to Sergeants Pulido and Clyde, and our family is torn apart.
The officers asked me earlier in the night, “has she ever threatened to harm herself or her son.” No I said emphatically. Her and I have had our issues, as most couples do. And she has experienced some depression recently, and we are working on this and trying to seek some mental health treatment. All this I told the officers, but sergeants Clyde and Pulido took this to mean something very different.
There was no harm to my son Leo. There was no endangerment, unless walking on the sidewalk at night is felony endangerment in today’s Southern California. Clyde and Pulido just didn’t like her explanation that she wanted to walk to Norwalk to see a friend and trade jewelry. I had explained to them that I had her only debit card because I had misplaced mine the day before, or, she told the officers, she would have taken Uber. Her phone had no service, so she couldn’t call us. It just didn’t add up for Clyde and Pulido so they decided “she met the criteria” and ripped apart our family, just at the moment we were reunited.
Now, I realize the worse thing I did that night was to call FPD, because in the end she made it home on her own – even though we were all very worried – and we would all be home together tonight enjoying each other. Instead FPD has torn our family apart, and we are lost. Never will I seek the aide of FPD again.
And one last thing, I don’t blame Clyde and Pulido as much as I blame the FPD. Where would they get this attitude, this aggressive nature? Where would they get the idea that somebody needed to go to jail in this situation. This is training that comes from the top, and that is your real problem Police Chief and City Councilmembers. Something very rotten is at the heart of your police department, and you need to do something about it.
Toby R Oliver
Now of course this is only Mr. Oliver’s story, but as stories go, it seems to have a degree of verisimilitude. The City will have its own version of the tale, no doubt, even if we are never allowed to see it.
Please note Mr. Oliver’s two conclusions: namely, that it would have been far better for him to have never called the Fullerton Police Department at all; and that there must be an ingrained culture of aggression and inhumanity in the department. As to the first conclusion, I leave that for others to determine. As to the second issue, those of us watching the FPD and the way it operates, have long ago detected a wide vein of callousness that accompanied the criminal and abusive behavior by its employees.
So what will come of all this except embarrassment for his family and big legal bills for Mr. Oliver? He won’t get any satisfaction from his communicants, that’s for sure, or even an apology. No, for the FPD admits of no error as its careening incompetence smashes across the lives of the people who have had the misfortune to be in their way.
California’s Brown Act specifically enumerates when public agencies can meet in secret (Closed Session, they call it) away from the prying eyes of the nuisancy public that pays for the whole show. One of these exempt categories is “litigation,” in which secrecy is deemed to be okie-dokie. The problem is that government agencies, when given an inch will invariably take a mile.
But when you fail to specifically constrain the arm of government, they will invariably flex those muscles. And so it is that “litigation” has come to includeanticipated litigation which, of course, could cover just about anything, anywhere, at any time. And that label seems to give the City of Fullerton reason to believe it can omit the names of anticipated litigants. The anticipated litigants must, necessarily remain in the dark about what the government is about to do to them, while the government, for its part, gets a jump on its adversary. Of course this isn’t right, but what do rights have to do with the City of Fullerton government?
Let’s first take a look at the City’s Closed Session agenda for September 17:
Opacity from a “transparent” government…
Notice the final two items have been draped in the magical shroud of “anticipated litigation.” We may wonder what the Big Mystery is. Rumors are circulating that at least one of the the items in question is the City’s desire to sue humble little us, Friends for Fullerton’s Future, and that the council has voted to do so.Could that really be true? FFFF, of course, would be the last to know. But the City Attorney made no mention of such doings while “reporting out,” from the Closed Session. If they’re true, what are we to make of the rumors?
Roosevelt Palmer Esq., Seeking Five Sisters…
The City has already sent a couple of laughable nastigrams in our direction, both of which were duly ignored, so litigation is plausible, but only if the City initiates it. This means that it is the City instigating, not reacting to likely litigation, and begs the question of why this issue would not be a matter for public discourse. And it also suggests that it is the city manager and his bumbling lawyers who will have advocated this harassment to cover up their own corruption they didn’t want exposed.
Well, I’m sure that covering up its clownish behavior is the last thing the esteemed council, upright city manager and brilliant city lawyers would ever do, so it seems pretty certain everything will be made clear. One way or another.
Uh oh. Another sexcapade courtesy of the Fullerton Joint Unified High School District.
Armed and twisted…
A few weeks ago we learned of the fun hijinks of FPD Pervy Peeping Policeman Jose Paez deployed on FJUHSD campuses as a “resource officer” which, if you think about it, if a pretty funny title for this creep.
Getting to the bottom of kids problems…
Yesterday, news outlets reported on the playful doings of Ms. Kristin Lynn Boyle, a school psychologist at La Habra High. She is accused of rape in a classroom.
What is it with this sort of thing? Makes you wonder why the grossly overpaid educrats can’t run their operation just a little better. Did anybody bother giving the psychologist a psych test of her own? And how many of these minor transgressions will be successfully whitewashed and written off as bad luck for the organization?
Folks here at FFFF have been prognosticating a new tax for several years. Even as councilcreatures Jennifer Fitzgerald and Jan Flory lied to the public by telling them the budget was balanced, we’ve been watching the strategic reserve fund dwindle away to almost nothing, leveling off last year only because so many positions were vacant.
The fact is that ever-escalating “public safety” pay and benefits, and a ruinous CalPERS pension debt have created what budget bean counters call a structural deficit; meaning, that the annual red-ink baths are a permanent condition that you can’t weasel your way out of selling marginal city-owned properties.
And so the harsh and inescapable reality has finally come home, like a wayward vulture, to roost. And harsh realities always trump the happy lies of politicians. It’s just a matter of time.
And that is why so many people have begun to hear stories that Councilcreature Jesus “Don’t Call Me Jeesis” Silva is sending up the trial balloon of a sales tax on the November 2020 general election ballot. The choice of that date is cynical since the General Election is will produce an electorate much more sympathetic to tax and spend policies of liberals like Silva, Ahmad Zahra, Flory and of course Fitzgerald. The seeds will be officially sown during the 2020-21 budget kabuki next spring. I am giving huge odds.
They always cleaned up after me!
It’s going to happen. Zahra and Silva are not up for re-election so they must figure they’re safe; Flory is the lamest of lame ducks, a flightless bird, in fact, and thoughtful Friends have already suggested that she was put back on the council precisely for an automatic yes vote on a new tax. After all Flory’s first love has always been public emplyees.
And this leaves Fitzgerald, an erstwhile Republican free to oppose the vote putting the tax on the ballot in order to unburden herself of running for re-election with the tax monkey on her back – exactly where it belongs.
The pieces are now pretty much in place. The only question is how much the FPD Culture of Corruption and their buddies lounging in the “firehouse” are willing to invest in their shakedown.
